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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Paul Olliver, Wider Wake Networks (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Any interesting stories about the companies you invested in?

Paul: Back to appssavvy, they’re really a case study deal for us. That’s exactly the way in which we like to work.

Steve: appssavvy started out with an idea when Facebook opened its platform to third-party developers. So, if you are familiar with Facebook, you may see apps like “Mafia Wars” or “Circle of Moms” or “Farmville.” All of these are applications that are built on the Facebook platform, to engage and entertain Facebook users. There are upward of 300,000 different apps on the Facebook platform today. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Paul Olliver, Wider Wake Networks (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Do you invest in teams straight out of school, or do you require previous business experience? If only with experience, what level of experience do you require?

Paul: We much prefer teams with experience, but that experience doesn’t need to be at a certain level of office. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Paul Olliver, Wider Wake Networks (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Is there anything your group does differently from others in valuing a company?

Paul: As we’re all successful entrepreneurs ourselves, we’ve been on that side of the table. We understand motivation and what a poor capitalization structure can do to motivation. For example, just because an entrepreneur wants to get a deal done and is offering a majority share to do so, that may not be the best course of action and may create flight risks and other issues once future rounds and dilution are taken into account. That said, we’re no pushovers, but it’s a balance between motivation on the strategic investor side and that of the management team itself. Both have ownership hurdles that need to be protected. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Paul Olliver, Wider Wake Networks (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How many investments have you made in the past 12 months?

Paul: Four. It’s probably a reflection of the fact that we’re a group of individuals who invest together, not a fund. When we set it out from when we knew the numbers we were aiming for in terms of membership, what we knew about those individual members and what their investable funds would be on a yearly basis, that’s the number we came to. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Paul Olliver, Wider Wake Networks (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: So, appssavvy is one of Wider Wake deals?

Paul: Yes, appssavvy is one our deals; KlipSmart is the company that we built years ago [before Wider Wake] . . . Smartclip is a company within Thomas Falk’s (one of our cofounders) empire, and that’s a video ad network that’s going great in Europe. As for Wider Wake exit success stories, the companies that we’ve invested in, it’s too early for us to have exited from them. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Paul Olliver, Wider Wake Networks (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: So, right now you have about 20 members in Wider Wake. How do you prescreen for your membership?

Paul: The membership criteria are quite tight, actually. All of the founding members have very applicable experience in digital media advertising. And that’s also reflected in the regular membership. So, we don’t have any silent money. We don’t have doctors, we don’t have structural engineers, we don’t have anybody who doesn’t have some insight, functional expertise, or experience in digital media advertising. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Paul Olliver, Wider Wake Networks (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the third interview in our series on seed financing and angel investing. Today we are talking to Paul Olliver, cofounder and CEO of Wider Wake Networks, Inc. and Steve Stratz, Wider Wake spokesperson. Wider Wake is headquartered in New York City, its member network is global, its members think of themselves as a trans-Atlantic angel forum, and they invest predominantly in digital media advertising. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Bob Aholt, Pasadena Angels (Part 10)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: And what do you think angels could do to be more successful?

Bob: There’s a couple of things – fantastic question, thank you for asking that. One of the things I think that we can do better is not filter out the companies that we invest in based on presentations and slickness and the ability to have a great presentation, but more on content and substance of the companies. That’s much easier said than done. We need to get to companies that are really good, that may or may not have a good presentation. And sometimes I think we get sold on a slick presentation. Another thing that, I think, has to happen is after the investment, I think that the angels need to provide more value downstream. And that’s one of the things that’s a competitive advantage for the Pasadena Angels. Our tagline is: More than money, we’re going to provide capital and guidance to a company. So if we can open our Rolodex and give a company a contact that it wouldn’t normally have, if we can stay close to the company and give it that benefit of 35 years of running a consulting firm, those are the things that are going to make a company more successful than others. >>>